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Lennon and McCartney: One of the most famous songwriting partnerships in pop music history, and this year on July 6th, it will be 60 years since the two first met at a church fete in Liverpool, England, back in 1957. John Lennon was 16 Paul McCartney, 15, and since then, it's become Beatles lore that over the years they had their ups and downs. The question for fans has always been, how did these differences effect their songs? To mark the anniversary, and their relationship as creative duo, composer Dr. Alexis Kirke from Plymouth University has used an algorithm to "chart the emotional development of their friendship through their lyrics." For a new piece, Come Together: The Sonification of McCartney and Lennon, Kirke will take the data he's gathered to create a classical duet of emotionally-annotated words from 156 McCartney songs and 131 Lennon songs.
A Beatles-inspired hotel in Liverpool is up for sale. The Penny Lane Hotel, in Smithdown Place facing Penny Lane, is on the market for £950,000. The three-story Mossley Hill hotel has been decorated with a Beatles theme to reflect its famous location. All 17 bedrooms, as well as the reception and breakfast room, feature Fab Four works of art and memorabilia. From their windows, many guests can look straight out at the “shelter in the middle of a roundabout” that features in Paul McCartney’s song Penny Lane. McCartney and John Lennon would often catch buses from that bus stop, which later became Sergeant Pepper’s Bistro and is undergoing a slow renovation.
These stunning photos capture The Beatles filming in Knole Park in Sevenoaks 28 January, 2017 - 0 Comments
This month marks the 50th anniversary of when Beatlemania hit Sevenoaks. The legendary British band recorded promotional videos for their double A-side, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, from January 30, 1967. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr visited the deer park on three occasions in January and February that year, each time accompanied by Swedish film director Peter Goldmann and a camera unit from Don Long Productions. And Kent Live has been given access to some brilliant images of that nostalgic time.
S&R Honors John Lennon – a great writer, a great composer, a great man 28 January, 2017 - 0 Comments
Despite every attempt to marginalize and discredit him, John Lennon still matters and always will. ” I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.” – John Lennon Mark Twain once described his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as “A book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.” Twain’s quote sums up the complex personality of our newest Scrogue, John Lennon – a sound heart often in collision with a deformed conscience.
"'A Day in the Life' – that was something," John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1968, setting up a classic bit of understatement. "I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me." The Beatles' catalog brims with legendary tracks, but the epic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band finale has long towered above the rest, a fact made official in 2011 when Rolling Stone named it as the group's single finest song. Studio recordings for "A Day in the Life" commenced 50 years ago, on January 19th, 1967. Here we look at 10 things you might not have known about the Fab Four's most glorious achievement.
We were greedy for our fix of non-stop beat music. The club didn’t look like much from the outside. After dodging the lorries delivering fruit to the Fruit Exchange opposite and the lunchtime shoppers, we queued to get in through a small door in the wall of a towering brick warehouse at 10 Mathew Street. Once inside we descended a steep flight of well-worn stone steps to a small landing, where a few more steps led to a man seated at a small wooden table taking the entrance fees. I paid an extra shilling to become a member of the Cavern Club entitling me to an admission discount at each visit — which in my case was most days. The heat and noise would send your senses reeling as you stepped through those cellar arches. It was enthralling and unbearably hot.
So Paul McCartney Is Suing Sony to Get his Songs Back. How Did He Ever Lose Them? 28 January, 2017 - 0 Comments
The big legal story of the last ten days or so is Paul McCartney’s announcement of his intentions to sue Sony/ATV (the music publishing division of Sony) in order to reacquire the rights to the songs he wrote and co-wrote during the first half of the Beatles’ career. Unless you’re a hardcore Beatles fan, you might not have known that Paul doesn’t receive any publishing royalties from songs like “Yesterday.” “A Hard Day’s Night” and “She Loves You.” Those were all part of the Northern Songs catalogue that slipped away from the Beatles in 1969 as a result of the debacle known as Apple Corps.
The photos feature in an exhibition taking place at Proud galleries in Chelsea in March. Photographer David Magnus bore witness to some of the band’s greatest moments and the set of previously unseen photographs, which were taken at the world famous EMI Studio 1 in Abbey Road, offer a fascinating and candid insight into The Beatles during a historic time. In 1963, at the age of 19, David Magnus was invited to photograph the band, who were relatively unknown at the time, during a concert at Stowe School.
And speaking of the Beatles (carrying over from last week), it may sound crazy but this column is about a guitar chord. That’s right — just one chord, so if you’re not into the guitar or Beatles music or whatever, so sorry. And yet it might help that this is one of the most famous chords in popular music history, a beautifully sustained and shimmering blast from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string guitar, a singularly bold, riveting and spine-tingling opening statement. The chord has entered music immortality and is instantly recognizable to almost everybody of that generation.
Money can't buy you love but it CAN buy you this original Beatles drum kit which is going up for auction 22 January, 2017 - 0 Comments
The Beatles may have claimed all you need is love but fans wanting to own an iconic bit of the band's kit which has just gone on sale will need more than just love. The drum kit used for the recording of the band's first US number one has been put up for auction with bidding beginning at $75,000 (£60,598). The kit was used by Andy White, often known as the 'Fifth Beatle', on the recording of Love Me Do, which became the band's first number one in the US.